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Nearly a year and a half ago, a group of news organizations formed the Chauncey Bailey Project to continue the work of the Bay Area journalist killed in 2007. The Project's executive editor Robert Rosenthal talks about some of the developments in the last year-and-a-half, including revelations about the Oakland police's mishandling of Bailey's murder case.
The Chauncey Bailey project was funded by the Knight Foundation as one of a series of experiments in new forms and new models for investigative reporting. It was a public-private consortium. In addition to Robert Rosenthal, it involved students from the University of California at Berkeley, two non-profits, the Maynard Institute and New American Media, as well as current and former reporters from commercial news organizations, including the Oakland Tribune. For more information about Knight Foundation-funded community news experiments, please see knightpulse.org
I can't remember when exactly but I recall when our local paper, the Register, faced a potential pressman's strike and it struck me as odd that the pressmen had a union but that reporters, who faced actual danger in reporting on crime, corruption and other highly charged issues, were all out there on their own. I mean there are only so many Ben Bradlees and Kay Graham to have as bosses in this business.
That's really part of the problem with the news business, reporters never banded together to protect each other, to work on common issues and to prevent management from gutting the industry for profits to the point where the product is no longer valued by the public. So, now they're surprised to be losing jobs wholesale and being shot at near Tiajuana.
"You can't scare me, I'm sticking with the union," never had any resonance with reporters, I guess.
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